Olimpia Milan ruthless, Trento eliminated
Milan passes Trent again
Olimpia too strong: Dolomiti Energia Trentino closes the season and says goodbye to its public. The Italian’champions pass 69-87 at Il T quotidiano Arena and close 3-1 the Serie A Playoff quarterfinals series. Open applause at the end of the match from the PalaTrento audience.
The team of coach Paolo Galbiati after the extraordinary feat of game-1 falls for the third consecutive time in the presence of the battleship Olimpia, which passes the round and goes to the semifinals where it will faceà Brescia. Game-4 manifested all the difficulties of a team that often in the season è managed to go beyond difficulties, absences and problems, but after 20’ of equal sports battle crashed on its own limits running into a black night at the outside shooting (7/29 from three).
Without Grazulis, Udom and Niang, the hosts’ short rotations became more and more impactful as the series went on.
In a complicated evening, the hosts’ best scorers were Kamar Baldwin and a combative Davide Alviti with 15 points on the scoreboard.
The Bianconeri start right away with a devastating dunk by Biligha that warms up the Trentino crowd, then the star of the first quarter è an Alviti who despite aches and pains invents 7 almost consecutive points that keep Trento in the slipstream. A dunk by Cooke on an assist by Hubb and a triple by Prentiss actually allow the hosts to take the lead right at the end of the first quarter (22-21).
The game è physical and hard-fought: Baldwin scores from three to contain the new guest extension, Mooney also gets unblocked but Aquila struggles to limit the production of Milano’s towers around the iron. At 29-34 Galbiati calls a timeout, Cooke returns to assault the basket but with Napier and Hines the Olimpia è ahead 32-38 after 20’ of play. Baldwin’s triple that keeps Trento at -7 and a dunk in traffic by Biligha are the hosts’ last attempts to hang on to the game.
Olimpia stretches with a 15-0 break that splits the game (39-62), in the last quarter Aquila doesn’t stop fighting but Milan è ruthless. The’last to surrender è Baldwin who scores two crazy triples: the final è 69-87 but the Trento public applauds.
